Onboarding a 401(k) plan sponsor
Setting up a business account with Penelope 401(k)
Penelope is a retirement platform for small businesses, that is expanding the sphere of opportunity to build generational wealth through retirement savings. In 6 months, I designed and launched onboarding and dashboards for both retirement plan sponsors (business owners), and participants (employees).
To truly make retirement savings more accessible, we needed to make these processes as simple as possible.
The plan sponsor’s onboarding required information about their entire employee team as well as making connections to their bank, benefits provider, and payroll systems. This led us to splitting their onboarding into multiple phases while the connections were made.
Phase 1
We used Finch to establish a read-only connection to client’s payroll systems. This connection was a prerequisite for accessing the dashboard, because it would populate information that was required for subsequent steps.
Phase 2
After connecting Finch, we could begin populating employee info. This would normally take a few days, but we could give users tasks to do while we waited for this crucial information.
Small business owners need to see only tasks that needed immediate attention, so we broke down setup into the smallest tasks possible, and only presented each when necessary.
Phase 3
This step helped our clients to avoid fines and penalties by staying compliant with regulations. 401(k) plans have rules hat preclude certain types of employees from participating, and payroll systems didn't have all of the necessary info to determine eligibility.
The task of adding employee info was a bigger lift, so it started with a modal that advised users to gather the necessary records and get comfy.
Phase 4
Completion of all tasks meant users were good to go! Users were notified of their plan's start date, which allowed for a mandatory 30 day waiting period. After which their 401(k) plan would be up and running, with employees making contributions to save for their future!